


Just Like You Imagined

by ilex9



Category: Dragonball
Genre: AU, Experimental, first person POV
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-01
Updated: 2016-04-22
Packaged: 2018-05-30 11:19:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6421864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilex9/pseuds/ilex9
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hell interlude</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is part of the other story I am working on but it's not in order. I can't seem to let go of this version of a sub-circle of Hell and Bardock being a part of it so. Also I felt like writing that dream/AU in an AU sequence from Ransom Due again for some reason so...

# \- Just Like You Imagined -

## One

I make my way back, bloodied, but whole, to the white shingle of the shoreline and Grandfather tells me I am finished.

"You passed," he says with brevity, his lips curled into the same jaunty grin as when I arrived. It seems like forever ago. Except now, I can see there is fakery in it, that there is something horrible, perhaps unspeakable just beneath the show he is putting on for me. Now I can't forget that I am in Hell, or even make to pretend otherwise.

"Every single test or task I could put you through," he continues, leaning back as though at ease into the threadbare armchair by the fire pit, "you're done. Flying colours." The grin cracks a little; I think, maybe, I see the twin nubs beneath the blue-cast skin on his forehead throb a little? "You should go now."

But, I am who... what, I am, so I prod one last time. "You're lying," I state simply, without accusation. He raises an eyebrow. The grin cracks just slightly more.

"I mean, you _are_ Hell's Oracle, aren't you?" I realize I am smirking now, unconsciously presenting myself as to broadcast dominance despite the fact that all I'm wearing is my tattered and stained school uniform, now several sizes too small. Never mind I know unquestionably, regardless of what I have achieved, he outclasses me a thousand-fold in both strength and experience, not to mention he is part of the way to becoming a full fledged demon.

"You haven't shown me my future yet." I finish my posturing with a sweet, almost innocent, girlish pout. As though this really was _only_ about his young granddaughter asking for a favor, perhaps a new toy.

"Well I can't." He says this in a clipped tone, his attention on toeing the embers in the fire pit, sending a solitary flame flickering for just a second before it dies away indicating subject closed, conversation over. "Rules, you know." He shrugs.

But then... 

"Perhaps, though..." He brushes the white-gray ash off his boot then looks up at me, the edges of his lips turning slightly back upward, this time the malevolence there quite clearly apparent, "...I can show you someone else's... some-time, as I have never been one to shirk on a challenge. That _is_ what you're on about now - _challenging_ me. Isn't it, my dear?" He says this with the same feigned innocence I had just used with him, though it is obvious that if he does, in fact, hold me dear, it is in a way utterly unlike anything the same sentiment from anyone in my human family would entail. Even Number Eighteen.

He doesn't give me a chance to respond before he is up, headed to the White Manor. So I follow, maybe somewhat cowed, wondering if I might have gotten in over my head here, finally, though I force myself not to show it.

We walk through the entropic limestone building - parlor, kitchen, scullery, atrium and hall, entering the forbidden territory of Babbs' room without pause. "She" the chalk statue of her, anyway, sits at the little table, just the same as what must now be years before, when I first came to this place. The same as some time more recent when Totepo dared to breach the lock on the entry against orders.

Had the scrying bowl moved? Was it my imagination, or had there been less of the red, viscous "water" from the blood sea in the bowl those times? It was hard to tell, but surely possible that the replica White Island breaking the surface in the center was submerged just slightly more than previously.

He swats aside a chiffon scarf shot through with gilded threads and takes a seat in one of the empty wing-backed Chippendales at the table, then makes an extravagent gesture inviting me to do the same across from him. I do, without hesitation, though every nerve in my body instinctually sings like a chorus of tuning forks that I _ought_ to be hesitating - at the very least.

This puts Babbs between the two of us and he places his hand on her cold shoulder, nodding slightly in my direction, again inviting me to do as he has. When I do he reaches across the table, offering me his open hand. I take it. Our fingers weave together, closing the circuit, this time without a spirit-bound supplicant in the position across from Babbs as a buffer between us.

I immediately feel an energy something like rotten offal, sludge, flowing from the statue into me, through me, feedback running the opposite direction through Grandfather like I am no more than some bastardized conduit for the two of them. I push past near painful nausea to concentrate on the bowl without being told this time, the tiny island in the center with its tinier White Manor and the red reflection of it, cast in the fluid. Then I am somewhere else. Someone else.

## Two

It is hot, stiflingly so. Sweat drips from my brow... or, not mine. The sensation is strange, like this could in fact be me, but surely is not.

For example, Celipa is there. And, is she?.. Oh, yes. She is definitely goading me. Of course I won't stand for it. Or... not-me won't, but the feeling seems as right and natural as if I am me.

She taunts, I chase her down. We fight... but it's not... a real fight? Me, I know somewhere in the back of this consciousness that I can beat her in a fair fight, now. But now isn't now and I am not-me and something is off. I'm cheating. Or, she's _letting_ me win?

She gives a little, then takes just a little more in this conflict, then repeats the same until we are wrestling in the dust. Before long, the contest becomes more about the removal of armor, though there is still plenty of pain to be given and received, and I am content to actually revel in it as I feel such a rising of lust... But I shouldn't because I just don't feel that way about women, or girls for that matter and she is most certainly a girl now. Her hair is even long, but still pin-straight and thick like I know it is when it's short and not-me _is_ totally into this, into _her_ in particular, so I have no choice than to just go with it.

She gets me on my back and climbs on top, not unlike that first time we sparred, but I am not-me and this is positively about something more than training and what she is doing is causing such absolute pain and something else plus, that I am sure I am paralyzed... Which is fine by not-me, but at the same time so humiliating and rage inducing that...

And then I, and not-me as well, see something glowing white in the red sky up past her shoulder. I don't know what it is... maybe a comet? But not-me knows for sure at first that it's not one of the two suns, not a comet... then knows for sure what it _is_ , and suddenly nothing maters but getting us away from this place, but there is nowhere to go and before I, not-me, can get very far everything is exploding - literal fire and brimstone plows through us and Celipa is caught in an updraft and even as she claws my wrist to pieces trying to hold on to it she crumbles to white hot ash and is swept away. 

My mind is reeling, I am calling after her "Teacher, no!" even though I remember it wasn't but maybe hours ago that I finally overcame her, tore her to shreds, thus graduating... But I have no voice and this isn't my mind, not-me only has her name but even that cannot break through the unintelligible raw howl that is my voice now as an aftershock thunders through me redoubling the heat and searing pain beyond pain...

Then the heat redoubles yet again, shifts into something else. What is left of the entire world is raging around me in flames, but I am raging even more... The red-orange of destruction dims and pales in comparison to the golden light I am seeing it all happen through, which isn't fire but something like electricity, static... unremitting anger, despair... elation! compressed and released, then I look at my hands and they are burning gold and it occurs to me that this is Ascension, but all the same it is too little, too late and there is nothing. Nothing I can do with it except wrap myself in it because now it is getting so cold and empty and everything, every _one_ is completely gone except for me and I am alone and will be forever, for all the rest of my days and I have failed. Failed so completely that it doesn't even matter...

I am back at the little table, the circuit broken. My wrist is bleeding. Grandfather must have scratched me horribly trying to hold on...

I look up and across the table to him.

"How does it feel?" He asks, deadpan. Then suddenly laughter starts bubbling up in him, and I know something is wrong! Horribly wrong. I am looking at it, and I know, but it doesn't register because I can hardly think through the realization that I have heard the term heartbreak, heart- _rending_ , but never really understood it until now.

I gesture shakily to my chest. "It... I... it hurts. Here."

I am mumbling, slack jawed at the blood running steadily in rivulets from his erupted horns, into his eyes and his grinning mouth and the jagged teeth set in a blue maw the color of putrid mold...

"This is Hell! It's supposed to hurt!" he shrieks and lunges toward me overturning the table, sending the scrying bowl shattering to the floor, splashing me with its contents. I am frozen in place for a fraction of a moment before I run, and in that sliver of time I notice Babbs is still sitting in her chair, but now she is smiling so wide, exactly like Grandfather, and I know, just the same as I did when I saw that light in the sky that I have to get out of here. Now.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mr. DeWinter is hungry.

# \- Somewhat Damaged -

## One

I am only actually running, or maybe more accurately stumbling, for seconds before my feet are off the ground and I am flying through the Manor.

The thing is, it's like the way we came in doesn't exist anymore, neither does any of the layout I remember from any of my previous sojourns into the place. Grandfather is right on my heels the entire time, that same sickening feeling I got when we closed the scrying circle is radiating from him as if it were heat. The whole time, he's making a sound that puts my senses on edge, something I can not describe beyond a mixture of horrible laughter and despair filled sobbing, neither and both.

I can't manage to put any distance between us, and the space is too cramped for me to take the gamble of just stopping and confronting him, if that were even a reasonable strategy. I want to just blast my way through and out, but somehow I _can't_ , something well beyond my ability or consciousness prevents me from doing it, a certainty that it's not my _place_ to take such action.

The space opens a little as we go through the library. It occurs to me that if I manage to make it out of here, I will be leaving behind the dictionary Totepo went through such pains to retrieve for me, and that the library is near the heart of the Manor, it _always_ is, and soon there will be nowhere to go but down, into the bowels of the cellar. I am somehow positive that if that happens I will be lost, never to leave Hell. The only reason Grandfather hasn't overtaken me is because he's been herding me there. I have no choice but to stop and confront him.

We enter the morning room and the space widens a little more (how the fuck a room in the almost center of the structure is so full of windows to the outside, I can't grasp) and I turn on him. He nearly plows into me, but I manage to strafe at the last second. The respite is brief, and before I can do anything but react on the instinct to flee, he's got me cornered between the hearth and the massive secretary, carved of otherworldly wood as immovable to me as any of the stone in the place.

Of course, this is _his_ place, and once he has me sufficiently locked in to a close hand-to-hand, he tosses the secretary aside like it was made of paper to get a better angle on his punches. It takes everything I have not to get hit, and when I block what I can't avoid, he's just breaks right through, pummeling me over and over again. I hardly have a chance to get a shot in, when I do he just avoids it neatly and continues. Somehow I notice his eyes are still completely rolled back into his head like he's still doing a reading, nothing but the bloodshot whites showing. It looks as if nothing of the man I first met remains of him any longer.

Before long I'm tasting blood in my mouth, choking on the bits of teeth he's smashed from my head and not even given me the chance to spit out. I know there must barely be anything left of my face but a bloody pulp and still, he hasn't even gone beyond playing with me.

"I've come to enjoy my meat tenderized, poppet."

Has he said this? Just thought it? I can't really reason through the ringing in my ears beyond the thought that this isn't yet how he plans to finish me off, and finish me off he will. I'm completely overpowered. I still manage an attempt a parrying some of his blows, but his eminent victory here is a done deal. Maybe everything I've gone through because of him, my training, building my strength and technique until I was able to beat his entire crew... Perhaps he was just getting bored and wanted a distraction? It seems nothing would be more of a relief than if he just ended me now.

But I _won't_ beg. In fact, because most of my reason has left me anyway, I use some of the last of what he taught me against him, and focus my ki into throwing out a false moon. It's blinding, such a thing released inside a room, windows or none.

It is, however, a rediculous gambit. Now I'm just a very large berserker animal stuffed into a too small cage that is _not_ going to break though it can barely hold me, but even this is short lived. He destroys the orb before I've completely transformed, and I find myself naked and completely vulnerable, his voice in my head telling me he likes this kind of game, as he begins to grow in size without the Oozaru transformation. The Manor finally splits open as his gigantic form rises through the white ceiling, my spinning vision finally taking in the expanse of the just-as-white sky before his figure blots it out.

He makes a game of trying to swat at me and stomp me into the ground for a short while, but I can tell he's only pretending to be slower than normal in his giant form, and yet, he's still incredibly fast. Game or not, I can barely keep out of his reach. At one point I use a move from Toma's playbook and suddenly drop to the ground, rolling back through the large gap Grandfather's stance affords. It takes him a moment to turn and renegage the chase, and for a fleeting second I think maybe, just maybe I have a chance.

And just as quickly my chance is gone, as he scoops me up in his massive, clawed blue hand.

His contenance is beyond terrible, nothing but the glassy whites of his eyes showing, gnashing, pointed teeth and curling horns.

"The better to..."

I don't let him finish this time. He's left one of my arms free and I have just enough sense to pour most of what's left of my ki into a kienzan. I hardly need to aim as the target is so close and so big. 

It goes slicing through the space between his horns and buries itself into his skull before exploding. He drops me and I manage to at least break the long fall with bukujutsu and make a break for the shoreline.

As fast as I am approaching the blood sea, it seems to be drawing away from me, and in a sudden puff of red mist, Grandfather is right in front of me. He's normal size again, and looks himself. He doesn't even block my way.

"That's mine," I hear him say, quietly. "But if it is what you want, so you shall have it."


	3. Somewhat Damaged (two)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You can check out any time you like...

## Two

Movies are one of the things that seem so terribly long ago. I am pretty sure I have seen something like this in at least one of the (supposedly, ha!) scary ones. The protagonist (who is both exceptionably likable and beautiful, by the way) flees to exit the horror, but the exit just gets farther and farther away and it's like they're going nowhere.

I guess that might have been better than what's happening, because as the blood sea is pulling away from shore, a massive wave, taller than even Grandfather's giant form, is building.

Before I entered Hell and got wrapped up in Grandfather's training regimen, I was pretty fast. If you squinted hard and concentrated when I pulled out all the stops, if you're a full blood human, you _might_ have been able to actually see me. After training here, there are probably only a few select individuals that could follow by sight what I'm up to at full speed, and more than that, I have learned some devious moves.

None of that matters with this wave. Once the tide shifts, it completely engulfs the island. When it breaks, the force is on par with what I just experienced in that cursed past-vision of the explosion of an entire planet. I have no control of my body as it is snatched and pulled like a rag doll, and the blood sea floods my insides anywhere it finds entry. I cannot see, hear, breathe. My gut, lungs, my _head_ seems to swim with it. And the whole time I know Grandfather is right there with it, pulling the strings, still toying with me relentlessly before...

My god! (Any one will do)... He is a complete monster, and by extension, I know without doubt, so am I. Genetically predisposed to kill, consume, destroy... It is entirely possible that Hell is treating me kindly here considering the potential I have to do evil, not to mention my father has made me an accessory to an unforgivable theft from En Ma.

The sea vibrates with a chorus of billions of lost souls to agree with me, urging me to just give in...

But I won't! I won't! I can't!

And with this, out of nowhere, my memory pulls up a picture of Number Eighteen in my mind's eye... and she's giving me that look - the one that tells me to drop all the melodrama and just get down to business.

So I make it simple, go back to underwater calisthenics, counting kilometers. Sure, I can't tell which way is up, and I might be covering more distance in the direction of being pulled backwards rather than getting away from the island (does it matter? every other person I talked to in Hell has mentioned not to bother trying to traverse the blood sea on my own, that the distance across is even longer than that of Snake Way, whatever that means) but I just keep pushing with what I think the numbers might be. And when the song of the damned threatens to break my concentration on the simple, bald-faced factual bent of the numbers, I push it aside with my own impromptu tune of where the numbers ought to be taking me - back home, or more specifically back to my family there. Eyes on the prize, so to speak.

Before I really catch on to what's happening I get the weird sensation that I'm not particularly solid, like everything is just dissolving _through_ my body. Then it strikes me that I am being called. This is the pull that Baba had told me to be alert for, that I was actively waiting for after I thought I had been here the prescribed seven days. I might not be the sharpest tack in the shed, but I am positive even though time runs funny here, seven days was over with a long damn time ago. Shit, I can tell I'm a lot taller and I started having periods since I've been here. In any case, I'm not a little kid anymore.

Maybe it's some sort of a sick joke that all I really had to do was think hard how there's "no place like home" to actually get out of here, teach me a moral lesson or some shit. If it is, jokes on whoever thought that was a good idea because the really sick part is, as difficult as my training here was, all things the same I'd do it again. I stopped listening for the call-back because I was enjoying myself. Really, would I have been allowed to just walk into Hell without even being dead yet if I didn't somehow just belong here?

Beyond that, it's fair to say that I took more than a little pleasure in not just defeating but _dispatching_ , brutally, the four people that had come to be my teachers, comrades... I might have even called them friends. To top it off, if I ever improve enough, however unlikely that is, the thought of coming back here and giving Grandfather a shakedown for going all demon-faced on me in the end isn't really too far a stretch to be honest.

He wasn't wrong at all when he accused me of challenging him. I decide to keep the idea in mind.

But, this is taking too long. I can tell it's more than Baba working on this too. I think I recognize Videl, which is really strange because I can't imagine anyone actually telling her about what I really am and the screwed up crap that I've been up to, not even Gohan.

As soon as I think about him I get mad all over again, angrier still that I sense his presence in the mix. There he is, butting in, trying to save me again when that's exactly what pissed me off enough to walk into Hell in the first place. And then, just like when I've been upset at Marron for one thing or another, the animosity just goes away. He's trying to help get me back there, which means he was thinking about me while I was gone. My heart flutters at that, and then swells when I decide he might have even missed me.

And it's over. I find myself solid again, back in the world.


	4. Sacrificial Bonfire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Change must be earned...

# Coda

## \- Sacrificial Bonfire -

He is back on the beach. Heavy surf. Always disconcerting. Because there's never any wind, he knows the only damned thing whipping up the festering sea is him. The manor is still draining blood, but soon it'll be back up to snuff; a place for everything, and everything in its place.

He feels tiny, weak after expending so much in fugue state, distraught. Blood runs back into the ocean in rivulets over the bone white shingle, coagulating in small pools upon which an oily film quickly forms. He goes down on one knee to examine one of the pools more closely, wondering just how many damned and suffering souls just this small portion contains, and how many of them met their end by his hand when he was alive.

Catching a glimpse of his reflection in the slick, he notes the change in his horns, no longer stubby protrusions but fully formed now, complete with viscious looking points. He thinks maybe his skin is a slightly deeper shade of blue, maybe the cost of what he is becoming is too great after all?

He is not sure if he is disappointed, upset that the girl managed to get away?... Or was it that he let her go? It is one thing to consume and recycle those already dead and suffering, but souls yet living, one of his own... the repercussions?

He touches a finger to the slowly diminishing pool and the surface ripples, rises to meet his touch before settling back down. He sees himself again and then the image wavers, splitting and doubling, twice, thrice over and continuing, becoming not his own reflection but iterations of his family, people he knew.

Each one seems to harbor something more awful, sinful, despicable than the last. What?! What has he started here? There's so many of them, it is so difficult to comprehend his brain literally aches. He wonders if all of them had ever been anything but terrible. Had he failed to stop the destruction of Vegetasei, or just given the universe a blessing by not stopping it? Had it ever even been him, or someone else? Confusion, despair and regret threaten to overwhelm him.

But there is one notable exception. His youngest son does not appear in the crowd of horrors, but suddenly he can feel the boy's presence. He looks up and sees him, fully grown now, hair as strange a shade of blue as any demon walking the wastes of Hell.

Kakarott smiles kindly, leans down over to look into the pool alongside the half-demon that is his father. "It'll be alright," he says. "I know it's kinda hard to see from here, but don't forget about the rest of us." He reaches down to the pool, it ripples again and appears to retreat, but he swiftly snatches away what has congealed into a nearly black, leather hard skin.

Just before the entire vision melts away he sees the liquid underneath is crystal clear and in its shallow depths show endless versions of his progeny, and theirs generations hence. All of them so pure and good, even heroic or nearly so... It's breathtaking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Silly Easter eggs, in order of appearance:
> 
> \- name that tune  
> \- armchair treasure hunt / The Practical Man  
> \- U.K. English rubbed off on him somewhere along the line  
> \- Damn Maggie, how'd you get here?... Well I guess we are dealing with potentially evil cousins...  
> \- ok, it's hard for me to actually get in the head of a straight character at this part, is that what realizing that would be like? Sorry, I have no experience to draw on here. Also does this prove OC is not a self insert? lol  
> \- ok, it's Babbs. She's very English.  
> \- and Name that tune. Same band, same album. Most of that album would be a great soundtrack for this blood ocean, but if you like Metalocalypse, I guess "Blood Ocean" would work as well, this is pretty bizarre actually   
> \- doesn't Hogwarts work like that too? idk I still haven't read those   
> \- three guesses. What language is that dictionary? (I am under the assumption that Kriss and Vegeta are not going to be close or even friendly, muttering insults under her breath straight from the old world, and then acting like she has no idea what that is even, is something she would do though probably...)  
> \- Mr. DeWinter, what exactly went down at Manderley the night your wife disappeared?  
> \- so do English people actually even say something like that? Clearly Babbs rubbed off on him way too much  
> \- yes, one of those alternate versions of Bardock was in fact a scientist and he absorbed that knowledge. I insist.  
> \- before this liking to lure or knock ppl on the ground to fight them by throwing himself at them was just supposed to be this warped pick up line Toma used on Celipa at some point, but we never really got to see those guys actually fight much so I just made it a thing.  
> \- big bad wolf so obvious it's just cliche but why the hell not?  
> \- Max Rockatansky   
> \- Poltergeist   
> \- ok, not so much a theft as being tricked into believing it was theft when that was actually according to the plan anyway, but he still gets in trouble for it. And one moving violation. I hope I get to writing that later bc it cracks me up.   
> \- The Ring  
> -idiom is intentionally wrong. Kriss knows lots of words and likes saying them, but lots of times doesn't particularly care what order they're in or even what they mean.  
> \- no I don't mind mentioning that, it's just part of growing up. Everything there is bloody anyway and no one present cares. I'd like to think making a big deal over that is a human thing exclusively.  
> \- Wizard of Oz is also obvious and cliche  
> \- my headcanon says Videl would have a crush on both of them. It's a totally angsty and awful love triangle and Gohan is just kind of along for the ride, nope not sorry.  
> \- name that tune again, totally different band (they're very English) also, if I remember correctly stage fright shut them down? That kind of fits this chapter anyway.  
> \- also headcanon that Bardock is kind of a neat freak, maybe even secretly a little nerdy, but not smart. lol Like if he got wished back, he would put on Gohans glasses and pretend to read hefty books, but only when no one was looking.  
> \- happy ending?


End file.
